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Politics and the American Press takes a fresh look at the origins of modern journalism's ideals and political practices. In particular, Richard Kaplan addresses the professional ethic of political independence and objectivity widely adopted by the US press. He shows how this philosophy emerged from a strikingly different ethic of avid formal partisanship in the early twentieth century. The book also provides fresh insights into the economics of journalism and uses business papers and personal letters of publishers to explore the influence of competition, advertising, and an explosion in readership on the market strategies of the press. Kaplan documents the changes in political content of the press by a systematic content analysis of newspaper news and editorials over a span of 55 years. The book concludes by exploring the question of what should be the appropriate political role and professional ethics of journalists in a modern democracy.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Partisan news in the early reconstruction era: African-Americans in the vortex of political publicity; 2. Economic engines of partisanship; 3. Rituals of partisanship: American journalism in the gilded age; 4. The two revolutions in urban newspaper economics, 1873 and 1888; 5. 1896 and the political revolution in Detroit journalism; Conclusion; Methodological appendix.
About the author
Richard Kaplan is Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work on media history has received the Catherine Covert Prize for best published article in Mass Communications History (1996). He has published in Journalism History; Media, Culture, and Society; and American Journalism.
Summary
Politics and the American Press takes a fresh look at the origins of modern journalism's ideals and political practices. Richard Kaplan documents the changes in political content of the press by a systematic content analysis of newspaper news and editorials over a span of 55 years.
Report
"Politics and the American Press is one of the most thought-provoking works on partisan journalism to appear in recent decades...Kaplan's critique of the press in the 19th and early 20th centuries is impressive and often persuasive because he is so well grounded in the context of the period." - Political Communication, Gerald J. Baldasty Political Communication
